BBC News thread

Trouble is, I bet they're now worrying about if the power supply is secure, and are trying to make sure launch day doesn't go "tits up" which would look even worse.

Right, now everything is back to normal, I would like to speculate about the BBC NEWS 24 schedule.

News 24 was originally a "stand-alone" service, that was positioned as a BBC version of Sky News. But since the relaunch of the BBC's TV channels, it has become a complimentary channel to BBC ONE and TWO.

That is to say that if you can get N24, you can get ONE and TWO, but it doesn't follow the other way round.

Therefore it follows that N24 schedule should be more complementary to ONE and TWO.

Starting with 6pm, whilst ONE has "the six", NEWS24 should have a half-hour sports program, "Sport at Six on 24".

At 630pm, to complement ONE showing regional news, N24 should show a bulletin like "the six", for those who missed it (because they were out, or watching "sport at six"...)

At 8pm, whilst "BBC Four News" is on BBC FOUR, have UK-focused half hour on N24.

At 10pm, whilst "the ten" is on ONE, N24 should have an analysis program (in Newsnight fashion) for those who have seen the news earlier and want deeper information.

At 1030pm, as Newsnight is on TWO, "Business Today" N24.

At 1120pm as Newsnight finishes on TWO, do a "join" to do the newspaper headlines from N24. N24 followed this with Newspaper review and then headlines and Hardtalk.

The channels share their output officially from 6am with Breakfast. For me, I would like a "World News" on N24 at 830am, but I know I am not going to get this (I have been told so).

At 1pm, N24 could offer an analysis program opposite the "one" on ONE.

What do you think?

Don't they have signed bulletins when at 1/6/10 o'clock? That seems a better use of N24 at these times IMHO.

How many people can use BSL? From RNID site



That's 0.085% of the UK population. It would be much cheaper for these people to be given a service over the internet, where they need it.

On N24 viewing figures, there must be 42 people wanting these in-vision signs. I am sorry, but this is a waste of precious shared resources that could be allocated in a more constructive way for the benefit of those needing the signs (perhaps higher resolution), and everyone else (an analysis program at lunchtime).

You could put them on the "Channel Islands" feed during the "one" "six" and "nine" and BSL viewers would just have to watch 958 not 507. And then they can have BSL national news, not N24...!

Or go the whole hog and have an interative channel that shows live or repeated BSL BBC programming 24/7? It could also carry Audio Description too...

(I assume this would be OK, as it's OK to have the "Liquid Loop" and "Entertainment Extra")..

And on Freeview, the BSL could appear on one of the BBCi channels, when not in use for other programming.

Any chance I could see that clip without being prompted by RealPlayer, to download RealOne Player?!?

http://djgm.co.uk/stuff/realplayer-unwantedupdate.png

I'm not usually one to be picky, but the PC version of RealOne is sh*te!

Afraid not, I only have the free version of Helix Producer, which can only produce files for Real One Player

Except Fremont Point analogue is apparently now fed off the DSat feed for some technical reason, so that would be seen in the Islands

You get the idea, anyway.

Whilst I am at it, perhaps if they have another week they could sort out the horrible interactive mess on News 24.

Firstly, feed the regional news information into the BBC News website.

Then, use BBC News website to drive the interative service on News 24. So you can access the full stories behind the headlines on the TV (even if you have to wait a few seconds for depth), and so know there is more stuff on the web.

And remove the pointless bridge. Let's have some useful things, like some tickers or just go straight into the multiscreen.

But whyohwhyohwhy is there not a great interactive news service alongside N24 when there is an world-renound BBC News site?

How is N24 going to be a broadsheet channel when it has a free-paper-that-comes-through-the-door-every-week text service?

We already do. There are journalists in all of the English Regional centres now working to News Online - including me!

Delivering services for deaf people over the internet is all very well in theory, but how are you proposing to stream a high-quality (enough to see what is being signed) picture over the internet to so many people all at once?

When you consider the actual practicalities of installing a fat pipe to the home of every single deaf person in the country, the plan starts to sound expensive.

It was more because they had to give up using the tower or whatever that they used to get the signal from the mainland. The picture quality from satellite is far better than the old analogue feed.

Right then. Brighton has never really exist for BBC regional news, so I must have missed it.... Anyway, the fact you are doing a fine job doing that means there is even less excuse for not having a fully-comprehensive service.

You even publish these as XML for use in third party web sites. So why not on DSAT? Are DSAT people not ABC1 enough?

And it's not bandwidth, because whole service as text fits into a 300k AvantGo channel, and that much less than 400k per second to repeat this evey ten seconds. There is enough room for this on satellite, Freeview and the service on cable is HTTP anyway.

Even Ceefax back in the 1970s worked out that you transmit index pages more frequently that those "in depth"...

And perhaps, one day, you could press a button and link into the story that is being flagged up in the on-screen graphics and talked about by the presenter... one day... in the future... (It would only mean broadcasting a RED=story identifier message in the interactive service, that's all).